GYOPO Diasporic Refractions: Installations, Symposium, and Afternoon of Performance

GYOPO Diasporic Refractions: Installations, Symposium, and Afternoon of Performance

June 3–10, 2025
Walt Disney Concert Hall
151 S. Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Diasporic identity is one that is inherently multiple; at its core is a recognition of difference. GYOPO resists essentialized notions of Korean identity and culture by refracting them through the lens of diaspora and intersectionality. On the occasion of Seoul Festival, GYOPO and LA Phil Insight present a week of video installations at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a symposium, and an afternoon of performance.

Grounding GYOPO Diasporic Refractions are two works by Seoul-based artists: A Performing by Flash, Afterimage, Velocity, and Noise (2019), an audio-visual installation by siren eun young jung in BP Hall and 커터3 CutterIII (2023), a video installation by Heecheon Kim in the Grand Avenue Lobby. The weekend of programming begins with a symposium co-curated by musician and artist Sasami Ashworth on resistance and creative practice, featuring artist yuniya edi kwon, designer Mindy Seu, and an intimate closing performance by singer-songwriter NoSo.

GYOPO Diasporic Refractions closes with an interactive afternoon of performance, co-curated by artist and GYOPO volunteer Hannah Joo, which includes Ari Osterweis, Sharon Chohi Kim, Hwa Records, and Young Sun Han—all diasporic Korean artists who ignite resistance from the spaces between memory and manifestation, and navigate the nuanced terrains of cultural memory, generational healing, and community building. Audiences are invited to absorb a blend of vocalization, movement, ritual, and procession, culminating in an embodied coalescence of themes in the Walt Disney Concert Hall Blue Ribbon Garden.

Video Installations

A Performing by Flash, Afterimage, Velocity, and Noise (2019) by siren eun young jung

Debuted at the Korean Pavilion of the 2019 Venice Biennale, siren eun young jung’s A Performing by Flash, Afterimages, Velocity, and Noises (2019) probes questions around gender, tradition, and emancipatory possibilities. The audio-visual installation is based on ten years of research on yeoseong gukgeuk, a genre of Korean theatre in which all roles, uniquely and subversively, are performed by women actors. A Performing by Flash, Afterimages, Velocity, and Noises manifests a queer aesthetics and politics through provocative gestures that break free from conventional genre performances and evocative interventions of light, speed, movement, and sound that sometimes clash and, at other times, reconcile beautifully.

커터3 CutterIII (2023) by Kim Heecheon

Heecheon Kim’s 커터3 CutterIII (2023), installed in the Grand Avenue Lobby, takes inspiration from the absence of time in video games and the disorienting white cube architecture of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul, Korea. The work was created using a “game engine” which is a software platform for developing video games, and represents real-world locations within randomly shuffled speculative scenarios, structurally revealing the spatiotemporal conditions imposed upon us. 커터3 CutterIII was commissioned and produced by MMCA, and its spiritual predecessor 더블포져 Double Poser (2023) has been exhibited and at the Hayward Gallery, UK among other venues.

Symposium

Co-curated by musician and artist Sasami, GYOPO Diasporic Refractions: Symposium brings into conversation musicians, scholars, and performers who draw upon their chosen crafts and Korean heritage to examine, deconstruct, and alter systems of oppression. To reinvent, survive, and resist has been an intrinsic part of the Korean experience. Artist presentations and a round table discussion will engage different perspectives on being part of the Korean diaspora—of sitting on the fault-line of eastern and western history and consciousness while deeply entrenched in the rituals, principles, and histories of violence in both the eastern and western worlds. This symposium is part of GYOPO Diasporic Refractions, which explores Korean diasporic experience through various interdisciplinary arts.

Afternoon of Performance

The GYOPO Diasporic Refractions: Afternoon of Performance offers an immersive experience where honoring historical resilience manifests new possibilities for collective agency and dissent. Diasporic Korean artists and performers Ari Osterweis, Sharon Chohi Kim, Hwa Records, and Young Sun Han ignite resistance from the spaces between memory and manifestation, navigating the nuanced terrains of cultural memory, generational healing, and community building. Through movement, sound, and bodily presence, diasporic identity is performed as a site of struggle and liberation—a living archive that refracts through embodied practice. This afternoon of performance invites audiences to witness how the active transformation of cultural memory through artistic interventions results in a return to deeply ancient ritual, one that demands collective imagining and building of liberatory futures. This afternoon of performance is part of GYOPO Diasporic Refractions, which explores Korean diasporic experience through various interdisciplinary arts.